Appropriating the Water

A Human Thirst

Humans now appropriate more than half of all the freshwater
in the world. Rising demands from agriculture, industry, and a growing
population have left important habitats around the world high and dry.

On March 20, 2000, a group of
monkeys, driven mad with thirst, clashed with desperate villagers over drinking
water in a small outpost in northern Kenya near the border with Sudan. The Pan
African News Agency reported that eight monkeys were killed and 10 villagers
injured in what was described as a "fierce two-hour melee." The fight erupted
when relief workers arrived and began dispensing water from a tanker truck.
Locals claimed that a prolonged drought had forced animals to roam out of their
natural habitats to seek life-giving water in human settlements. The monkeys
were later identified as generally harmless vervets.

The world's deepening freshwater crisis-currently affecting
2.3 billion people-has already pitted farmers against city dwellers, industry
against agriculture, water-rich state against water-poor state, county against
county, neighbor against neighbor. Inter-species rivalry over water, such as
the incident in northern Kenya, stands to become more commonplace in the near future.

"The water needs of wildlife are often the first to be
sacrificed and last to be considered," says Karin Krchnak, population and
environment program manager at the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) in
Washington, D.C. "We ignore the fact that working to ensure healthy freshwater
ecosystems for wildlife would mean healthy waters for all." As more and more
water is withdrawn from rivers, streams, lakes and aquifers to feed thirsty
fields and the voracious needs of industry and escalating urban demands, there
is often little left over for aquatic ecosystems and the wealth of plants and
animals they support.

The mounting competition for freshwater resources is
undermining development prospects in many areas of the world, while at the same
time taking an increasing toll on natural systems, according to Krchnak, who
co-authored an NWF report on population, wildlife, and water. In effect,
humanity is waging an undeclared water war with nature.

"There will be no winners in this war, only losers," warns
Krchnak. By undermining the water needs of wildlife we are not just undermining
other species, we are threatening the human prospect as well.

Pulling Apart the Pipes

Currently, humans expropriate 54
percent of all available freshwater from rivers, lakes, streams, and shallow
aquifers. During the 20th century water use increased at double the rate of
population growth: while the global population tripled, water use per capita
increased by six times. Projected levels of population growth in the next 25
years alone are expected to increase the human take of available freshwater to
70 percent, according to water expert Sandra Postel, Director of the Global
Water Policy Project in Amherst, Massachusetts. And if per capita water
consumption continues to rise at its current rate, by 2025 that share could
significantly exceed 70 percent.

As a global average, most freshwater withdrawals-69
percent-are used for agriculture, while industry accounts for 23 percent and
municipal use (drinking water, bathing and cleaning, and watering plants and
grass) just 8 percent.

The past century of human development-the spread of
large-scale agriculture, the rapid growth of industrial development, the
construction of tens of thousands of large dams, and the growing sprawl of
cities-has profoundly altered the Earth's hydrological cycle. Countless rivers,
streams, floodplains, and wetlands have been dammed, diverted, polluted, and
filled. These components of the hydrological cycle, which function as the
Earth's plumbing system, are being disconnected and plundered, piece by piece.
This fragmentation has been so extensive that freshwater ecosystems are perhaps
the most severely endangered today.

Consider the plight of wetlands-swamps, marshes, fens, bogs,
estuaries, and tidal flats. Globally, the world has lost half of its wetlands,
with most of the destruction having taken place over the past half century. The
loss of these productive ecosystems is doubly harmful to the environment:
wetlands not only store water and transport nutrients, but also act as natural
filters, soaking up and diluting pollutants such as nitrogen and phosphorus
from agricultural runoff, heavy metals from mining and industrial spills, and
raw sewage from human settlements.

In some areas of Europe, such as Germany and France, 80
percent of all wetlands have been destroyed. The United States has lost 50
percent of its wetlands since colonial times. More than 100 million hectares of
U.S. wetlands (247 million acres) have been filled, dredged, or channeled-an
area greater than the size of California, Nevada, and Oregon combined. In
California alone, more than 90 percent of wetlands have been tilled under,
paved over, or otherwise destroyed.

Destruction of habitat is the largest cause of biodiversity
loss in almost every ecosystem, from wetlands and estuaries to prairies and
forests. But biologists have found that the brunt of current plant and animal
extinctions has fallen disproportionately on those species dependent on
freshwater and related habitats. One fifth of the world's freshwater fish-2,000
of the 10,000 species identified so far-are endangered, vulnerable, or extinct.
In North America, the continent most studied, 67 percent of all mussels, 51
percent of crayfish, 40 percent of amphibians, 37 percent of fish, and 75 percent
of all freshwater mollusks are rare, imperiled, or already gone.

The global decline in amphibian populations may be the
aquatic equivalent of the canary in the coal mine. Data are scarce for many
species, but more than half of the amphibians studied in Western Europe, North
America, and South America are in a rapid decline.

Around the world, more than 1,000 bird species are close to
extinction, and many of these are particularly dependent on wetlands and other
aquatic habitats. In Mexico's Sonora Desert, for instance, agriculture has
siphoned off 97 percent of the region's water resources, reducing the migratory
bird population by more than half, from 233,000 in 1970 to fewer than 100,000
today.

Pollution is also exacting a significant toll on freshwater
and marine organisms. For instance, scientists studying beluga whales swimming
in the contaminated St. Lawrence Seaway, which connects the Atlantic Ocean to
North America's Great Lakes, found that the cetaceans have dangerously high
levels of PCBs in their blubber. In fact the contamination is so severe that
under Canadian law the whales actually qualify as toxic waste.

Waterways everywhere are used as sewers and waste
receptacles. Exactly how much waste ends up in freshwater systems and coastal
waters is not known. However, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
estimates that every year roughly 450 cubic kilometers (99 million gallons) of
wastewater (untreated or only partially treated) is discharged into rivers,
lakes, and coastal areas. To dilute and transport this amount of waste requires
at least 6,000 cubic kilometers (1.32 billion gallons) of clean water. The FAO
estimates that if current trends continue, within 40 years the world's entire
stable river flow would be needed just to dilute and transport humanity's
wastes.

The Point of No Return?

The competition between people and
wildlife for water is intensifying in many of the most biodiverse regions of
the world. Of the 25 biodiversity hotspots designated by Conservation
International, 10 are located in water-short regions. These regions-including
Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, the western United States, the
Mediterranean Basin, southern Africa, and southwestern China-are home to an
extremely high number of endemic and threatened species. Population pressures
and overuse of resources, combined with critical water shortages, threaten to
push these diverse and vital ecosystems over the brink. In a number of cases,
the point of no return has already been reached.

China

China, home to 22 percent of the
world's population, is already experiencing serious water shortages that
threaten both people and wildlife. According to China's former environment
minister, Qu Geping, China's freshwater supplies are capable of sustainably
supporting no more than 650 million people-half its current population. To
compensate for the tremendous shortfall, China is draining its rivers dry and
mining ancient aquifers that take thousands of years to recharge.

As a result, the country has completely overwhelmed its freshwater
ecosystems. Even in the water-rich Yangtze River Basin, water demands from
farms, industry, and a giant population have polluted and degraded freshwater
and riparian ecosystems. The Yangtze is one of the longest rivers in Asia,
winding 6,300 kilometers on its way to the Yellow Sea. This massive watershed
is home to around 400 million people, one-third of the total population of
China. But the population density is high, averaging 200 people per square
kilometer. As the river, sluggish with sediment and laced with agricultural,
industrial, and municipal wastes, nears its wide delta, population densities
soar to over 350 people per square kilometer.

The effects of the country's intense water demands, mostly
for agriculture, can be seen in the dry lake beds on the Gianghan Plain. In
1950 this ecologically rich area supported over 1,000 lakes. Within three
decades, new dams and irrigation canals had siphoned off so much water that
only 300 lakes were left.

China's water demands have taken a huge toll on the
country's wildlife. Studies carried out in the Yangtze's middle and lower
reaches show that in natural lakes and wetlands still connected to the river,
the number of fish species averages 100. In lakes and wetlands cut off and
marooned from the river because of diversions and drainage, no more than 30
survive. Populations of three of the Yangtze's largest and most productive
fisheries-the silver, bighead, and grass carp-have dropped by half since the
1950s.

Mammals and reptiles are in similar straits. The Yangtze's
shrinking and polluted waters are home to the most endangered dolphin in the
world-the Yangtze River dolphin, or Baiji. There are only around 100 of these
very rare freshwater dolphins left in the wild, but biologists predict they
will be gone in a decade. And if any survive, their fate will be sealed when
the massive Three Gorges Dam is completed in 2013. The dam is expected to
decrease water flows downstream, exacerbate the effects of pollution, and
reduce the number of prey species that the dolphins eat. Likewise, the
Yangtze's Chinese alligators, which live mostly in a small stretch near the
river's swollen, silt-laden mouth, are not expected to survive the next 10
years. In recent years, the alligator population has dropped to between 800 and
1,000.

The Aral Sea

The most striking example of human
water demands destroying an ecosystem is the nearly complete annihilation of
the 64,500 square kilometer Aral Sea, located in Central Asia between
Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Once the fourth largest inland sea in the world, it
has contracted by half its size and lost three-quarters of its volume since the
1960s, when its two feeder rivers-the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya-were diverted
to irrigate cotton fields and rice paddies (see Endpiece, page 40).

The water diversions have also deprived the region's lakes
and wetlands of their life source. At the Aral Sea's northern end in
Kazakhstan, the lakes of the Syr Darya delta shrank from about 500 square
kilometers to 40 square kilometers between 1960 and 1980. By 1995, more than 50
lakes in the Amu Darya delta had dried up and the surrounding wetlands had
withered from 550,000 hectares to less than 20,000 hectares.

The unique tugay forests-dense thickets of small shrubs,
grasses, sedges and reeds-that once covered 13,000 square kilometers around the
fringes of the sea have been decimated. By 1999 less than 1,000 square
kilometers of fragmented and isolated forest remained.

The habitat destruction has dramatically reduced the number
of mammals that used to flourish around the Aral Sea: of 173 species found in
1960, only 38 remained in 1990. Though the ruined deltas still attract
waterfowl and other wetland species, the number of migrant and nesting birds
has declined from 500 species to fewer than 285 today.

Plant life has been hard
hit by the increase in soil salinity, aridity, and heat. Forty years ago,
botanists had identified 1,200 species of flowering plants, including 29
endemic species. Today, the endemics have vanished. The number of plant species
that can survive the increasingly harsh climate is a fraction of the original
number.

Most experts agree that the sea itself may very well
disappear entirely within two decades. But the region's freshwater habitats and
related communities of plants and animals have already been consigned to
oblivion.

Lake Chad

Lake Chad, too, has shrunk-to
one-tenth of its former size. In 1960, with a surface area of 25,000 square
kilometers, it was the second-largest lake in Africa. When last surveyed, it
was down to only 2,000 square kilometers. And here, too, massive water
withdrawals from the watershed to feed irrigated agriculture have reduced the
amount of water flowing into the lake to a trickle, especially during the dry
season.

Lake Chad is wedged between four nations: populous Nigeria
to the southwest, Niger on the northwest shore, Chad to the northeast, and
Cameroon on a small section of the south shore. Nigeria has the largest
population in Africa, with 130 million inhabitants. Population-growth rates in
these countries average 3 percent a year, enough to double human numbers in one
generation. And population growth rates in the regions around the lake are even
higher than the national averages. People gravitate to this area because the
lake and its rivers are the only sources of surface water for agricultural
production in an otherwise dry and increasingly desertified region.

Although water has been flowing into the lake from its
rivers over the past decade, the lake is still in serious ecological trouble.
The lake's fisheries have more or less collapsed from over-exploitation and
loss of aquatic habitats as its waters have been drained away. Though some 40
commercially valuable species remain, their populations are too small to be
harvested in commercial quantities. Only one species-the mudfish-remains in
viable populations.

As the lake has withered, it has been unable to provide
suitable habitat for a host of other species. All large carnivores, such as
lions and leopards, have been exterminated by hunting and habitat loss. Other
large animals, such as rhinos and hippopotamuses, are found in greatly reduced
numbers in isolated, small populations. Bird life still thrives around the
lake, but the variety and numbers of breeding pairs have dropped significantly
over the past 40 years.

A Blue
Revolution

As these examples illustrate, the
challenge for the world community is to launch a "blue revolution" that will
help governments and communities manage water resources on a more sustainable
basis for all users. "We not only have to regulate supplies of freshwater
better, we need to reduce the demand side of the equation," says Swedish
hydrologist Malin Falkenmark, a senior scientist with Sweden's Natural Science
Research Council. "We need to ask how much water is available and how best can
we use it, not how much do we need and where do we get it." Increasingly, where
we get it from is at the expense of aquatic ecosystems.

If blindly meeting demand precipitated, in large measure,
the world's current water crisis, reducing demand and matching supplies with
end uses will help get us back on track to a more equitable water future for
everyone. While serious water initiatives were launched in the wake of the
World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg, South Africa, not
one of them addressed the water needs of ecosystems.

There is an important lesson here: just as animals cannot
thrive when disconnected from their habitats, neither can humanity live
disconnected from the water cycle and the natural systems that have evolved to
maintain it. It is not a matter of "either or" says NWF's Krchnak. "We have no
real choices here. Either we as a species live within the limits of the water
cycle and utilize it rationally, or we could end up in constant competition
with each other and with nature over remaining supplies. Ultimately, if nature
loses, we lose."

By allowing natural systems to die, we may be threatening
our own future. After all, there is a growing consensus that natural ecosystems
have immense, almost incalculable value. Robert Costanza, a resource economist
at the University of Maryland, has estimated the global value of freshwater
wetlands, including related riverine and lake systems, at close to $5 trillion
a year. This figure is based on their value as flood regulators, waste
treatment plants, and wildlife habitats, as well as for fisheries production
and recreation.

The nightmarish scenarios
envisioned for a water-starved not too distant future should be enough to
compel action at all levels. The water needs of people and wildlife are
inextricably bound together. Unfortunately, it will probably take more
incidents like the one in northern Kenya before we learn to share water
resources, balancing the needs of nature with the needs of humanity.

Don Hinrichsen is a UN consultant.
He is former editor-in-chief of Ambio
and was a news correspondent in Europe for 15 years.